Milk drinks in a small kitchen
Breville Bambino Plus (BES500)
The most café-like milk drink you can make at home without learning to steam milk — in a machine narrow enough to live on a crowded counter. Bring your own grinder.
- Shot quality
- 8
- Steam power
- 8
- Build
- 7.5
- Ease of use
- 9
- Value
- 8.5
Pros
- Automatic steam wand delivers proper microfoam without technique, and adjusts for texture and temperature
- ThermoJet heats in seconds, which makes it realistic on a weekday morning
- Ships with non-pressurized baskets, so a good grinder genuinely improves the shot
- Digital temperature control keeps brew temperature steady shot to shot
- Very small footprint for a machine making drinks this good
Cons
- No grinder — the true cost is this plus $150 or more of grinder
- The 1.4L tank and shallow drip tray need refilling and emptying often
- Lightweight body can shift on the counter when you lock in the portafilter
- Automatic milk is excellent but removes the chance to learn to steam by hand
Don't buy this if…
…you do not already own a burr grinder and do not intend to buy one. Paired with pre-ground coffee or a blade grinder, the Bambino Plus is an expensive way to make mediocre espresso, and a Barista Express or a super-automatic will serve you better.
The milk system is the reason to buy it.Breville’s automatic wand uses a temperature sensor against the pitcher and a controlled air-injection phase: it introduces air early to build volume, then stops aerating and simply spins the milk to fold that air into a fine, uniform foam, cutting off at the temperature you selected. The result is the glossy, pourable texture you get in a good café, not the stiff bubbly cap a panarello frother produces. There are three texture settings and three temperature settings, so you can run wetter milk for latte art or drier for a cappuccino. In practice, the first flat white most owners make with it is better than the tenth they would have made learning by hand.
The espresso itself is real, and that is not a given at this size.The Bambino Plus ships with 54mm non-pressurized baskets, so the puck creates the resistance and your grind setting actually controls the shot. That is the difference between a machine you can improve and one that has a ceiling built into the hardware. It also runs a pre-infusion phase at low pressure before ramping up, which helps the puck saturate evenly and reduces channeling — a genuinely useful feature to find at this price.
The ThermoJet heating system is the underrated feature. Most espresso machines want 15 to 25 minutes to come to a stable temperature, which is the reason a lot of home machines end up unused on weekday mornings. The Bambino Plus is ready in about three seconds. That single fact changes how often the machine gets used, and a machine that gets used is worth more than a better machine that does not.
Where it stops.There is no grinder, and there is no getting around that: budget $150 or more on top. The water tank is small enough that a household making four drinks a day will refill it constantly, and the drip tray fills faster than you expect. The machine is light, so locking in a portafilter with any force pushes it around unless you steady it. And because it is a single thermoblock, you pull and then steam rather than doing both at once — a non-issue for two drinks, an annoyance for six.
The honest comparison. Against the Barista Express, the Bambino Plus makes better milk and takes far less space, while the Barista Express includes a grinder and costs less than a Bambino Plus plus a comparable standalone grinder. That is the real decision, and we break it down in full in Bambino vs Barista Express.
Price as of Sep 2, 2026. Prices change — Amazon's at checkout is the one that counts.
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